Monkey Wrenches

• Dis­cov­ery
• Set expec­ta­tions
• One slide, three ways
• Review­ing with the presenter
• Uni­ver­sal design & accessibility

Intro

Today I want to talk to you about how to approach design you’re cre­at­ing some­thing for some­one else and you hear the direct or implied words: “I don’t like it.” What do I mean by, “I don’t like it!”? I’m speak­ing from the per­spec­tive of your pre­sen­ter or that project man­ager who is the gate­keeper between the two of you. When either of them express dis­like for slides, that dis­like can come in two fla­vors:

• Either they don’t like the slides they’ve brought to you or
• they don’t like the slides after you worked your magic on them or
• both.

Let’s address both sit­u­a­tions, talk about some pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures for the for­mer and per­sua­sive tech­niques for the lat­ter.

Sources of slide angst

Let’s talk about the WHY of the dis­like. Where does it come from? Slide angst can be rooted in sev­eral things:

• Not know­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate a point
• Not know­ing how to use the program
• Not hav­ing enough time to think a con­cept through
• They used some­one else’s slides
• They want to use their slides as a teleprompter
• They think the audi­ence needs ALL THE THINGS

Discovery

Ok, before we get started on those bad slides, there are two things we need to do first. One: it’s impor­tant that you know how the deck is being pre­sented.

• Is it a slide­doc?
• Is it a webi­nar where every­one will be sit­ting 12 inches from their screens?
• Is it in a meet­ing room with a crappy pro­jec­tor and lots of windows?
• Or is it on the main stage at a conference?

How the deck will be pre­sented will inform how the slides will be made over.

Set expectations

Two, you need to set expec­ta­tions about the out­comes you can pro­duce within the given time­frame. Esti­mat­ing how much time a project will take is prob­a­bly the thing I am the worst at. So I made a check­list I run through with the pre­sen­ter that lists out what work will be done depend­ing on the dead­line. I know this is small. Right now, I just want to show you how much work I do at each level. I’ve added a link to a pdf of this table to this page so you can down­load it. Take it, revise it to your will, and keep it handy. The list (avail­able for down­load below) is divided up into 3 types of dead­lines: loom­ing in red, upcom­ing in yel­low, and dis­tant in green. Note that more than 50% of the red col­umn is about only mak­ing things on the slide con­sis­tent & acces­si­ble.

One slide, three ways

Ok, we have 3 kinds of dead­lines and dif­fer­ent amounts of work that can be done for each one. Let’s use one slide and make it over in 3 dif­fer­ent ways accord­ing to those dead­lines. Assume that you’re work­ing an 8 day today. You have 2 hours of manda­tory meet­ings to attend, some admin work to do, and a bunch of decks from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to get done. And then you get an email from your boss ask­ing you to update this slide for the pre­sen­ta­tion they’re giv­ing in XYZ con­fer­ence room. “When do you need it?” “In an hour” is the answer. And this is the slide.

1‑hour makeover edit list

• Reset slide layout
• Got rid of that clip art
• Sim­pli­fied the call­out shape
• Added space between bullets
• Made text sizes consistent
• Removed bold from almost everything
• Removed under­lined text, made bold instead
• Made inden­ta­tions consistent
• Removed .PNG check­marks, changed bul­lets to actual checkmarks
• Changed col­ors used to be readable/accessible (you’ll hear me say this a lot)… still within brand palette.

This is as far as I will take a slide makeover when given no time to do it in. At this point, I hon­estly don’t care one lit­tle bit about the con­tent. I haven’t been given enough time to care.

2‑day makeover

Ok. Let’s expand the dead­line. Say I was given until the day after tomor­row to fix this up. Same work­load. In that case, I would have cleaned up to this point, dupli­cated the slide to save one as an option, and con­tin­ued play­ing. Addi­tional edits include:

• more white space to reduce cog­ni­tive load
• title reworded
• chun­ked out months
• made a visual indi­ca­tor of where we are in the process

2‑week makeover

We kept the last ver­sion, the yel­low dead­line ver­sion, as option one and ditched the red dead­line ver­sion. (As in, I saved it sep­a­rately and won’t show it to the pre­sen­ter unless they are ADAMANT that I show them some­thing more akin to what they gave me.) We visu­ally for­mat­ted as a time­line and color coded the chunks of time so that you can eas­ily under­stand the dif­fer­ences in dura­tion. Then we added a lit­tle ani­ma­tion.

Give options

Remem­ber to give options when you can. Espe­cially for ret­i­cent pre­sen­ters. Show them what they asked for and then show them what COULD be. Also, show options when you notice that the infor­ma­tion can be inter­preted sev­eral ways if you have no way of talk­ing to the pre­sen­ter directly. (Some­times the pre­sen­ter is too close to the info and may not even real­ize that there’s another way to inter­pret the info.) Then make a print­out like this with 3 ver­sions of the same slide under var­i­ous dead­lines and use it to set expec­ta­tions for future projects.

Reviewing with the presenter

Ok, now comes the moment to send off your hard work to the pre­sen­ter. This is when “I don’t like it” can mean they don’t like your changes. And this is also when you might have to sell your rec­om­men­da­tions. Well-designed slides and copy DO help the audi­ence quickly under­stand the infor­ma­tion being spo­ken to. Well-designed slides and copy DO NOT:

• over­whelm the audi­ences with too much information
• dis­tract the audi­ence from what is being said
• cause phys­i­cal dis­com­fort to those look­ing at or read­ing it

Universal design & accessibility

When work­ing with peo­ple who are resist­ing well-thought-out makeovers, it’s impor­tant to walk them through the whys behind the changes they aren’t too happy about. Some of us design on instinct and gut feel­ing, some of us method­i­cally apply design prin­ci­ples, some of metic­u­lously apply uni­ver­sal design stan­dards to accom­mo­date peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. No mat­ter which cat­e­gory you fall under, it’s impor­tant to have some guide­lines and best prac­tices doc­u­mented to fall back on when hav­ing these kinds of dis­cus­sions with your pre­sen­ter. I’ve men­tioned acces­si­bil­ity a cou­ple of times so far, but what does that mean for our pre­sen­ta­tion design and how can it help us win our pre­sen­ters over with regards to the hard work we’ve done? Acces­si­ble or uni­ver­sal design means mak­ing an expe­ri­ence just as good for those with dis­abil­i­ties as for those with­out. And dis­abil­ity comes in many fla­vors:

• per­ma­nent dis­abil­i­ties like colorblindness
• tem­po­rary dis­abil­i­ties such as cataracts & bro­ken arms
• sit­u­a­tional ones such as screen glare or a hor­ri­ble inter­net connection

Any­one can expe­ri­ence a dis­abil­ity when the design, envi­ron­ment, atti­tude, or social struc­ture excludes them from par­tic­i­pat­ing or under­stand­ing. By mak­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion work for the extreme cases makes the expe­ri­ence bet­ter over­all for every­one. We call this uni­ver­sal design. Legal depart­ments likes to call it “avoid­ing law­suits.” How many of you design with acces­si­bil­ity in mind now? Let’s see how this ties into our slide makeovers.

Vision-based impairments

Affects those with:

• Blind­ness
• Col­or­blind­ness
• Aging eyes
• Screen glare

Design con­sid­er­a­tions:

• Is the body copy size at least 16pt?
• Is the color con­trast between text and back­ground high enough?
• Is the color con­trast on all parts of the pre­sen­ta­tion high enough?
• Are you mak­ing use of Alt Text on icons and images for com­pat­i­bil­ity with screen readers?
• (or mark­ing them as dec­o­ra­tive to reduce the noise?)

Text size & readability If your pre­sen­ta­tion is going to be given in a room on a screen, and your pre­sen­ter insists on a slide of solid text, send them this slide. Have them stand in the back of the room and do a vision test. What is the small­est size they can read? How is their vision com­pared to every­one in the room? And if they have to have a wall of text up on screen to appease the Com­pli­ance gods… then, hope­fully, the pre­sen­ter will be ready to crack a joke about what the audi­ence is see­ing.

Comprehension- & reading-based impairments

Affects those with:

• ADHD
• Dyslexia
• Irlen Syn­drome
• Advanced age
• Cog­ni­tive impairments
• Lan­guage barriers
• Hasn’t slept well
• Dis­tracted by children

Design con­sid­er­a­tions:

• Is the text to back­ground con­trast too high?
• Are we imped­ing read­abil­ity by cen­ter­ing large blocks of text?
• Do we have enough white space in our text styles?
• Are you using place­hold­ers as much as pos­si­ble to sup­port screen readers?
• AYUTMA? (are you using too many acronyms?)

Hearing-based impairments

Affects those with:

• Deaf
• Hard of hearing
• Noisy envi­ron­ment
• Small, needy children

Design con­sid­er­a­tions:

• Do we make use of cap­tion­ing in our presentations?
• Do we offer tran­scripts of any video and audio content?

Technology impairments

Affects those with:

• Poor hard­ware quality
• Out­dated soft­ware version
• Poor inter­net connectivity

Design con­sid­er­a­tions:

• Are our ani­ma­tions too com­plex to run smoothly over poor inter­net connections?
• Are you mov­ing through slides too quickly for poorer con­nec­tiv­ity when pre­sent­ing online?

Conclusion

So there you have it. One slide, 3 ways depend­ing on how much time you’re given. Each option is rooted in uni­ver­sal design which deliv­ers a set of best prac­tices that are, in some ways, eas­ier for The Busi­ness to under­stand and agree to when it comes to your design changes. When it comes down to it, just remem­ber that you and the pre­sen­ter are on the same side. You want the audi­ence to con­nect with the infor­ma­tion being pre­sented. Have empa­thy & be kind.